Steelers Trade Santonio Holmes To Jets, Adhering To Their Almost ZERO TOLERANCE Conduct Policy

The Steelers shipped Santionio Holmes to the Jets this week for a fifth-round-pick, a deal reportedly made in haste while the Steelers were considering cutting Holmes in the wake of his recent assault allegations.

Say what you will about the return in the deal, or about where this trade leaves the Steelers’ receiving corps, but the trade again re-iterates a clear, absolutely unwavering message:

The Pittsburgh Steelers will simply not tolerate off-the-field misconduct in any capacity, PERIOD.

No sir — if you’re repeatedly accused of criminal misconduct, regardless of whether criminal charges are filed or a verdict is issued, you have no place in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ organization. It doesn’t matter if you’re a former first round pick, or if you played a prominent role in a Super Bowl victory, or if you’re an impending free agent or under a lucrative long-term contract, or if you’re a black guy with dreads or, I don’t know, a 6’5″ white guy from Ohio.

Principles are principles, and Dan Rooney recognizes that dignity and morals far overshadow on-the-field accomplishments, and that if you consistently ignore the transgressions of your players — even your popular star players — in the pursuit of winning, then in a way you’ve already lost.

I personally applaud the Steelers for their decisive and extremely consistent conduct policy; their absolutely unwavering commitment to consistent moral standards for every single player — I cannot stress enough that these standards apply to every single player — is a shining example of consistent consistency for the entire National Football League, so much so that I’d even lobby for the team to change their name to the Pittsburgh Consistents, because their conduct policy is so overwhelmingly consistent, it’d be the only way to sufficiently and consistently celebrate that consistency.

Browns 13, Steelers 6: Our Sundays Just Got A Whole Lot Freer

There’s nothing quite like that final nail being driven into another nail as a precautionary extra-nail to make sure that even if the first nail in the coffin for the Steelers’ season somehow rusts and falls off, there’ll be another nail to ensure that the coffin will definitely remain shut, even though it’s six feet underground and has no way of opening back up anyway and also it can’t score a touchdown against the league’s worst-ranked defense and takes eight sacks and couldn’t look less like it cares about anything.

That metaphor became muddled a bit in the middle, but the basic thesis statement was the same as it’s been the past four weeks, that being “Wow is this team pathetic”. The Browns game was, in the words of one Myron Cope, “A dee-bacle! [And a complete waste of our mother-effing time!]“. I’m assuming he would’ve said the second part.

The Steelers scored six points against the Cleveland Browns. SIX. It’s the NFL equivalent of Bob Uecker’s “One goddamn hit?” Major League quote. SIX points is beyond worthless, unless you draw three little lines on the I and turn it into “SEX POINTS” and it’s a woman saying it and it turns out that I’m actually watching a football-themed porno and not a season-defining Steelers/Browns game, but that unfortunately was not the case here, as much as I attempted to take giant huffs of glue to make myself hallucinate into believing this every time Roethlisberger got sacked on third down.

The Steelers defense only gave up 13 points, but still, is this team capable of stopping an opponent on third and ANYTHING? If the other team was up against a 3rd and ????, like the question marks that people put on party invitations when they don’t know when it’s gonna end cause it might go on forever, some running back would take a two-yard pass, then every Steeler would literally have their hands wrapped through the dude’s bone and sinew and around his heart and still somehow not tackle him until he got far enough up the field for the refs to all agree “I don’t know what question mark stands for, but they definitely got it.”

It’s probably too late in the season to get back to the basics, but let’s take a quick moment to go over some very simple vocabulary for two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Ben Roethlisberger:

Bengals 18, Steelers 12: How Bout That Pens / Bruins Game?

As if this game wasn’t frustrating enough, we can now brace ourselves for an aftermath of writers and commentators saying that Cincinnati’s record and their double-sweep of the Steelers and Ravens proves unequivocally that the Bengals are, in fact, the best team in the AFC North. Sure, their defense has played a lot better the last two weeks than I ever gave them credit for, and maybe it’s just my day-after bitterness talking, but does anyone honestly think that the Steelers wouldn’t beat this team in a head-to-head playoff game, even on the road? Provided Polamalu’s leg hasn’t been amputated by then, of course.

That being said, the Steelers simply did nothing to deserve this game. The defense played well but didn’t create any turnovers, and the offense, while not completely horrible, also didn’t make any big plays, couldn’t convert third downs, couldn’t do anything in the red zone, and just generally earned that stupid-looking “12″ on the scoreboard at game’s end.

Before I go into details of the Steelers’ ineptitude and make us all angry again, let’s rewatch Bill Guerin’s game-tying goal against Boston:

Woooooo!!!!! LET’S GO PENS!!! LET’S GO PENS!!!

What was I talking about? I forget. Probably not anything terrible that ruined my Sunday, I imagine. Yayyy hockeyyyyyy!!!

Guh…alright…some random Bengals thoughts after the jump:

Steelers 28, Broncos 10: Kyle Orton Suddenly Remembers He’s Kyle Orton

The Steelers’ 28-10 victory in Denver last night was a satisfying one for a number of (fairly obvious) reasons:

– The offensive line played consistently well for four quarters. Rashard Mendenhall finished with 155 yards on 22 carries, including only two completely stuffed runs that I can recall, as opposed to the usual “every back-to-back run is immediately stuffed and the running game is abandoned until the next series.” Roethlisberger had tons of time to throw, especially in the second half, and only took sacks after long pocket sequences in which every receiver was blanketed throughout the play. Announcers call these plays “coverage sacks,” but I’d more accurately call them “Ben Roethlisberger is Ben Roethlisberger.”

– We can dispense with the idea that Champ Bailey is a shutdown corner whose halves of fields opposing quarterbacks deliberately avoid. Santonio Holmes finished with six catches for 93 yards, most of them with Bailey extremely visible in the tv frame.

– Is there a more pointless stat than naming the combined number of Pro-Bowl appearances by a group, as the MNF crew did with the Champ Bailey / Ty Law / Brian Dawkins Broncos secondary? Good thing the Broncos didn’t have Junior Seau and his 75 Pro Bowls also, or they would’ve really crushed the Steelers in the “Having More Pro Bowls On Your Roster Regardless Of The Players’ Current Ages” Race, which is the object of football.

– Odd play selection discrepancy by the Broncos: They attempted 3 actual runs and 78,556,031 playaction fakes. The Steelers stopped biting after that first series, as any group of humans with eyes / the capability for short-term memory would have.

Steelers 27, Vikings 17: Dumbass NFL Victories Are Way More Fun Than Dumbass NFL Losses

The Steelers had already fallen victim to two “Dammit, NFL” losses, so it was about time for a “Dammit, NFL” win. The Steelers didn’t control play against the Vikings at all; they were outgained 386 – 259, lost the possession battle 36:58 – 23:02, converted only 4 of 12 third downs, most of which were exceedingly reasonable, and Roethlisberger turned in a pedestrian 14/26 for 175 yards and a TD. Still, the Steelers prevailed, because it’s the damn NFL and good teams win weird games like this all the time; unless you’re the ’07 Patriots, even the league’s best teams usually pad their gaudy records with three or four crappy victories, but in the end, as cliched as it sounds, none of that matters, cause the Steelers won, they’re 5-2 now, and the Vikings are no longer undefeated.

The Vikings did commit an astonishing 5,795 yards worth of penalties, which helped a bit, and the Steelers D finally got tired of us whining about them needing to make a big play and spitefully scored two touchdowns to shut us up (for at least one quarter). Even with the Vikings’ miscues and the seemingly slanted offensive statistics, the Steelers could’ve put the game away earlier if…

1) Santonio Holmes’ TD wasn’t negated with an offensive pass interference call on Heath “Ol’ Reliable Except On That Play” Miller.

2) Rashard Mendenhall hadn’t fumbled on the Vikings 4 yard line by diving over the pile on a non-goalline play and spastically flinging away the football. I’m pretty sure Mendenhall was waiting for the exact millisecond when Steeler fans finally trusted him again after his rookie struggles and Bengals-game benching to make sure that when he did screw up again, it was extra gut-wrenching. I’m still waiting for Lastings Milledge to do the same with the Pirates next year, with a hot month of April followed by him randomly founding a Neo-Nazi hate group in May (Awww, crap!)

3) Not allowed Percy Harvin to return a kickoff 275 yards for a touchdown (yep, he ran the length of the field and back untouched 2.75 times). The Steelers special teams had to play competently for all of 2008 before I even began to entertain the thought that whenever they kicked off, it might actually not get returned for a touchdown (or to like, the Steeler 10), and like the Mendenhall thing, juuuuuuust when I was beginning to believe in the Steelers’ special teams, they’ve now given up kick return TDs in back to back games.

Apologies for the Bill Simmons-style rip-off reference, but I feel a bit like Helen Hunt at the end of Cast Away; after being convinced for months and months through therapy that my husband was gone, I finally grew to accept it, then BAM! He’s back out of nowhere. Only in this case, the husband is some random fast dude warping to the 50 untouched and me shrugging too hard to bother shouting the F-word.

4) Any Combination of the Above. All three would’ve been nice.

Other random thoughts on the game:

Gene Collier On Why The Jeff Reed Situation Is A Situation

I do spend an inordinate amount of time in this blogspace whining about professional sportswriters’ columns, but I don’t want to give the impression that that’s the only thing I do; sometimes, I whine about professional sportswriters’ columns while also swearing a lot. So I’m kind of a Renaissance Man (The movie with Danny DeVito. I am that movie, is my point).

No, but really, to prove that I’m not Complaineypants McWhinerson when it comes to other peoples’ columns, even though that is my legal name, I would like to call attention to Gene Collier’s excellent P-G column today about the apparent hypocrisy between the Steelers’ handling of the Jeff Reed situation versus the Santonio Holmes benching a season ago.

Personally, I’m not against the Steelers’ decision to dress Reed for the Minnesota game this weekend, and the team’s stance doesn’t appear to be egregiously unreasonable, but this decision taken in conjunction with the decision to bench Holmes a season ago after he was found to possess a small quantity of marijuana is more than a little eye-opening, and certainly calls for a better explanation than Mike Tomlin and the organization were willing to give.

At its heart, this story does continue to call into question the myth that the Steelers organization is somehow more noble than the rest of the league when it comes to character issues. They’re not the Bengals, and they never trip over their own feet Jerry Jones style to snap up ex-cons at a bargain price, but can we stop acting like this franchise is on some holy, untouchable pedestal when it comes to valuing some vague form of ‘integrity’ over practical football decisions?

Taking a moral stand is a lot easier when it doesn’t require signing a kicker for one week and depending on him to kick at Heinz Field against an unbeaten team in the midst of a tight division race. Plus he doesn’t have dreads.

Bengals 23, Steelers 20: I Need A Vacation

There’s nothing quite so uniquely demoralizing as going to a bar with friends to watch a game, eating a bunch of food, drinking beers, and then losing that game to a mediocre team in the final seconds despite a dominant first half and an eleven-point lead in the fourth quarter (and roughly 57,829 missed chances). It’s like going to a three-hour movie and only realizing in the last fifteen seconds that the movie is terrible and you’ve wasted your afternoon.

You also begin to regret the beers and the fish n’ chips platter and the fried pickles, as they’ve retroactively transformed from celebratory group-engorging to just a bunch of fatty, heavy crap you piled into your stomach while your team lost stupidly. Then you get home, it’s 7:30, and you realize you’ve spent your Sunday devoted to something that merely pissed you off.

Why is this acceptable in sports and in no other walks of life? I’d never devote three hours to watching a CSI: Miami DVD then walk away going “Dammit, why did that have to happen? There goes my whole day. I’m gonna be angry through to Wednesday now.”

Fortunately, this Thursday, I’m going to Europe for two weeks. Not because of this game. Well, partly because of this game. But only like 30% because of this game. Needless to say, my initial reservation about the timing of my trip — “Damn, I’m gonna miss two Steeler games, two Penn State games, some MLB playoffs and the start of hockey season” — has transformed into “Yay, I don’t have to watch this crap for two weeks!”

I’m not sure the game requires much analysis, so here are some whiny complaints:

WEEK 2: Bears 17, Steelers 14

Didn’t have much motivation to write about this game yesterday, not because of crippling depression or anything, but more just out of general ambivalence towards the outcome. The Steelers didn’t play terribly, but they certainly didn’t play well, and when you miss two makeable field goals and produce no turnovers, you’re going to lose a lot of football games. I have just been awarded a Pulitzer in Groundbreaking Not-Obvious Journalism for my previous sentence. I’d like to thank you all for your support, I couldn’t have won that thing I just made up without you.

Random Thoughts:

– Me after the game last week: “Wow, could you imagine a full season of Santonio Holmes playing like he did in the playoffs??”

Me after the game this week: “Never mind.”

– Is there anything more infuriating than watching the opposing coaches celebrate after your team missed a damn field goal? They’re literally just celebrating a random occurrence that reflects no accomplishment on the part of them or any of their players.

– Of course, I was celebrating Tennessee’s missed field goals last week, but when it happens the other way around, you suddenly realize how frickin’ stupid cheering for a missed field goal is. It’s like cheering another team’s delay of game penalty.

WEEK 1: Steelers 13, Titans 10 (OT)

Sorry for the slightly late Recap, devoted readers (Dad), but I was too busy following the Steelers’ slight, underwhelming victory by slightly, underwhelmingly celebrating (had two PBRs then went to sleep – I feel that was sufficient for this one).

I couldn’t get over how amazingly similar this win was to every other frickin’ Steeler win last season:

- Completely nonexistant running game.

- Roethlisberger miraculously avoids sack only to get sacked humorously farther back.

- Roethlisberger throws an interception so randomly and unexpectedly, you don’t even get angry cause it seems like it didn’t really happen.

- Troy Polamalu is good. At least, until the Cobra Kai Sensei instructs Fatty McCrumpler to fall on his knee and injure him.

- The defense gives up first downs but somehow keeps not allowing points, and the passing offense gets its crap together in time to narrowly win. The offense is again “clutch.”

A win is a win (am I the first person to ever write that? Definitely) and an early season win against a quality Tennessee team is certainly nothing to get discouraged about, even if the running game looked like porn for gangtacklers; if the Steelers can just keep their obvious flaws to exactly overlapping last year’s obvious flaws, maybe they can win the damn Super Bowl again. Does that count as a line of reasoning? Eh, why the hell not.

Still, the game was full of legitimate positives: